Common Psychological Defenses

(Guess what?, If you don't see any of this in yourself, of course it's a defense)

"Crystal balling": looking into the crystal ball of one's own imagination and determining one's behavior primarily from that. For example "I knew that that was probably what you would think, so I didn't bother." or " I didn't borrow your lawn mower because I knew you were going to borrow a lot of my stuff later on."

"Categorizing and dismissing": Perhaps the granddaddy of all defenses. Before you even realize it, your mind takes an impression or perception from the outside world places it in a box (category) and put it on a shelf. It never had a chance to be mindfully processed and you are only lucky if you ever get corrective feedback again. As the gap between a stimulus and it's immediate categorization narrows the defense becomes airtight.

"Talking oneself and in and out of things": Here you convince yourself of things; you try to come up with a good argument to talk yourself into something. You believe your own propaganda. You will to believe supersedes your will to really find out. You believe what you want to believe and unconsciously arrange and select facts in a way that fits your beliefs. You split yourself into "convincer" and "convincee". It's a dishonest state where it's too painful to admit what you don't know what to make the effort to really look.

"Wound oblivion": Here you are clueless to the extent of your own wounds. This is a very understandable state and is true for every one. It's just a matter of degree. You both convince yourself you're not wounded and your wounds are so encapsulated you are not even aware of them. If you were wounded at a time before you had the ability to cognize you'll have absolutely no conscious connection to the wound. For you, that wound will not exist. That part of yourself which has never seen the light of day will not and cannot exist to you.

"Decorating the prison walls": You suffer from "wound oblivion" and rather than dealing with your wounds and getting out of the prison of your wounds. You change "window dressing" thinking you're changing things on a deeper level. You talk yourself into believing you're making all sorts of marvelous changes.

"Sheathing the irrational in the rational": Deep confused irrational thinking is frosted over with a layer of rational appearing thoughts. All of a sudden we think we're making logical sense. It is too painful to look at our honest confusion.

"Blind spot denial" : Here one does not take into account the fact that when one navigates through the world one will have blind spots just as we have blind spots that our mirrors don't pick up on when we are driving. If you drive a car and you do not take into account your mirror blind spots you will eventually have an accident. In this blind spot blindness you "can't see the flies in your eyes because of the flies in your eyes". Similarly in falling for "The myth of the given" you believe that what you perceive has no or few blind spots and needs no further exploration or consulting with others for corrective feedback.

"The essential need for the active attainment of corrective feedback is given a low priority": Here one assumes that if feedback is needed for one's behavior it will be obvious and forthcoming. One does not need to actively check out one's assumptions. This defense allows a person to live in their own world and comfort zone and not have passed to change.

"Whistling in the dark": here one avoids the unknown, the undifferentiated, and the amorphous within oneself by clinging to the known or overlaying the unknown with the known. One holds onto easy explanations of what one sees and oneself. One may feel uneasy and in the dark (in the background) and one covers that feeling by telling oneself "this (whatever) reason must explain my experience, there's nothing to be deeply concerned about or afraid of".

"Denying the unexpressed": Here one becomes oblivious to unexpressed anger, appreciation, hurt resentment etc. They're not aware that anything needs to be expressed and they will report that they have nothing to express. Later on they will somatize what they didn't express by experiencing headaches, fatigue, withdrawal, muscle tension etc.

"Comfort zone addiction": Here "wussaholics" want to stay in their comfort zone at all costs. The status quo is held on to very tightly as a means of security. It is a defense against being overwhelmed that causes one to become overwhelmed even more easily as one's settles into it.

Much of what is out of one's comfort zone is looked on with distrust and as abnormal. The trying of new things is looked at as impractical sense what they do already "works" for them.

"Sugar Coating":

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